A life brilliantly reflected

Bridget McManus

For a conversation that hinges on the encroaching death of one of its participants, Kerry O'Brien's June interview with Clive James in Cambridge is a relatively cheerful exchange. The 73-year-old Australian author and cultural commentator extraordinaire may be gravely ill with emphysema but, as he reflects on his life in the imposing surrounds of the Old Library at Pembroke College, where he studied as a young expatriate, he commands as powerful and composed a presence as he has throughout his illustrious career. Discussing his work, his family, even his funeral plans with the eloquent frankness only a writer of his calibre can, James does not, aside from a rudely interrupting cough, appear to be a man not long for this world. The very idea that his remarkable brain might cease to exist is surreal. And yet, the one-hour interview took him an entire day to film.

"I thought it was an incredibly generous commitment on [James'] part given his circumstances," O'Brien says. "He knows he's dying. He doesn't know how long he's got and I'm certainly not going to speculate on that but, as he says himself, it certainly focuses the mind and focuses him on his priorities. This is the time in a person's life when they're reflecting more deeply than perhaps at any other time and, when you look at the contribution that Clive James has made across such a broad creative and cultural front - and he's a man who's spent a lifetime reflecting - then it's something that I thought was important to do and I was really pleased that he was prepared to do it."

Having interviewed James sporadically throughout O'Brien's 15 years hosting The 7.30 Report, and during the 2007 Noosa Longweekend arts festival, O'Brien felt their rapport was such that James might entrust him with an interview not only when he was so ill, but in the wake of what O'Brien refers to as "one of the most despicable pieces of television I've ever seen" - A Current Affair's claim last year that James had had an affair with medical entrepreneur Geoffrey Edelsten's first wife, Leanne. Leanne Nesbitt disputes inferences that her interview with ACA was the catalyst for James' separation from his wife of 45 years, academic Prue Shaw.

"I made my own decision that I wasn't going to make any reference to that appalling piece of exploitative television," O'Brien says. "I was determined that I wasn't going to raise it directly. I thought through very carefully how I was going to put questions and that was out of respect to him. I do think that there can be a fine line for journalists between asking questions that need to be asked for the integrity of a story and asking questions to get a minute's sensation. But, partly because he himself has written in poems about the breakdown of his marriage, I felt comfortable raising the broad issue of his marriage and family at this extremely vulnerable time in his life. He put no demands on what I could or couldn't raise. I think he was a little bit apprehensive and I think that was clear in some of his answers, about the impact of the interview on his family. As he says himself, he and his wife are back on speaking terms and, reading between the lines, I think he would like the marriage to be restored completely. So I guess he had to walk his own fine line between candour and his desire to see his marriage back together."

Inimitable: Sense of humour intact, cultural critic and writer James discusses his life and career with Kerry O'Brien in Clive James: The Kid from Kogarah.

It is perhaps not surprising, given Clive James' extensive body of work, that, even in such ill health, he is still working - on the sixth volume of his memoirs; a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy; and his television column for London's Daily Telegraph.

"Where the rest of us feel it might be time to hang up the shingle, for a lot of creative people, because the imagination is such an open-ended process, they don't just reach the age of 69 or 70 and say, 'Well, I'm now going to focus my imagination on the garden or go for walks on the beach'," O'Brien says. "It's been going for a lifetime; it's going to keep going. I can absolutely understand that somebody like Clive James is going to keep feeding it, or keep giving it outlets. But it must be a form of real torment for him to have the mind still pumping but his body not really allowing him to get it out at the pace that he's been used to."

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The good-natured James, who chuckles when describing how he'd like his ashes to fall just so over Sydney Harbour Bridge, is the real deal, O'Brien says.

"He's got a wonderful capacity to send himself up and laugh at himself without it being false or pretentious. He suddenly realises he's quoting himself from the past and breaks out into laughter at himself. There's a real charm about Clive in that regard."

Their shared sense of humour soothed any nerves O'Brien might have had about interviewing an esteemed interviewer.

"What differentiated Clive's programs on television from others was that he brought that wonderful satirical brain, that whimsy, a kind of amused aside, which set him apart from people like [Michael] Parkinson. Parkinson would sometimes winkle things out of people that they perhaps hadn't intended to say and they were entertaining and sometimes they were insightful. The extra layer that Clive James provided was the humour, the whimsy, the gentle satire, the commentary on the side. I haven't seen anyone do it better. That's what made him special. If you were to write a one-sentence epitaph, you might say, 'He broke the mould'."